Chapter Text
prologue
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It’s only the second or third week of November when he arrives at their – no, her safe house.
She hasn’t seen him since – what, the Battle of Hogwarts? Or is that an imagined memory, a story Ron or Harry might have told her, a story she’s made up in her head, a way to remember the things that happened, but not to her? She doesn’t know, can’t always pin point where what might have occurred in the fabric of time – nobody really could anymore, nobody so much had time to look at a calendar, let alone regard a clock and make sense of what ‘hour’ it might be, not in their safe house. No, in her safe house. Her prison?
Ever since she’s moved here, there’s only been light and dark, a vague sense of morning and night, with the sky changing every so often to mark the sun’s movement. She’s not sure why she thinks that it’s November with such certainty, after all – there is no absolute way of knowing the month except perhaps the hint of cold that hangs in the air, the icy breeze that greets her every morning when she steps out onto the porch, silent and sweater-clad, digging her nails into her arms to remind herself to be present, to be aware. Perhaps it’s snowed already, she can’t recall clearly – there isn’t any snow to account for in the wasting yard out front – the only bit of pale she has taken stock of in the recent past has been Luna Lovegood’s hair. Now shorn to Luna’s ears, no longer quite as wavy, matted with dirt and yet still somehow warm, familiar. Luna’s been a regular visitor at the safe house, arriving every month or so, carrying a sack of potatoes that is each time smaller than the last.
Hermione pulls the blue coat tighter around her – it’s either Ron’s or Harry’s, she can’t remember even this detail anymore, and it smells like them too, sweaty, cinnamon-like, familiar, like her childhood wrapped around her, keeping her steady where she is. She’s leaning against a beam – this safehouse’s porch has always been a little large, a little fancy, powder-blue painted wood all over, giving the impression of a balcony or a deck. Words she left behind in the other world, the Muggle world, the one they’re fighting to protect, the one she has cut out of herself and planted elsewhere, far away in her mind, her parents tightly locked away in there, safe, away from harm, away from her, unimpeachable.
It's Neville and Hannah who bring him in. They’re carrying him by the elbows, his head’s bowed, lolling, almost as though he were asleep, and his silver hair looks white (not a speck of dirt in them, not a tangle, nothing, hanging in a way that isn’t too reminiscent of their school days – she’d never thought of him as having curls, but there they are, wavy and out of place) and his feet – she notices the shoes look expensive, sparkling clean in a dirty dirty time like this, shining black against the pale white-ish mud – his feet are dragging, and he is limp between the two Order members, and his robes are almost as pristine as the shoes, splattered with mud and what she will later recognise as blood.
They drag him across the yard, before a silent and stoic audience – Katie, with her hair buzzed off (lice broke out in another safe house, Hermione had learned only this morning), Seamus, whose knuckles glimmer purple and bruised in the light (another covert operation at a Pureblood residence, she’s guessed), and the further figures, tall and imposing – of Snape, Moody and Remus.
If someone had told her two years ago that the three of these men would be standing together in front of her, in the middle of the War that Destroyed Everything, running a defense she had never quite imagined as becoming a real, tangible unit of soldiering and spying, Hermione would have spit out her Butterbeer right then and then in that person’s face and scoffed at the sheer stupidity on display.
But here they are, standing stock still and impassive, wands in their hands, leaders of the Resistance, having Apparated from different safe houses to witness this, to strategise and plan the way forward – that’s also why Katie and Seamus are here. This is the first time, in a year, that she’s seen so many people in one place, in her place.
She’s only ever shared this safehouse with Neville very briefly, who moved here with her, no questions asked – was it a year ago? The light had been different then, more expansive, maybe it had been summer. She shakes her head, there is a faint ringing in her ears now. She knows that warm feeling in her chest as the warning it is - fear. Neville and her hardly talked then – they don’t speak now either, and though she’d never thought of a life without Harry or Ron or any of the others – an impossible thing, a severely imbalanced thing – here she is, without the two of them or any of the rest, with only this coat to keep her company, to stand in for the life she used to have. A long time ago.
They drag him all the way to where Snape and the others are standing, before letting him go. Hannah looks grimly satisfied as Draco Malfoy’s knees hit the ground, perhaps against some of the rockier ground – there is some kind of impact, Hermione thinks, but his body only sways, and she is almost certain he will fall, either on his side or flat onto Snape’s boots and it really does look that way for a few moments.
There’s a dark streak of blood that’s followed him through the yard, a curved line in place of the way Neville and Hannah dragged him and it glints in the faint sunlight, catching her eye.
But instead of falling, their enemy – wanted No. 2, second only to the Dark Lord himself, killer of too many friends and Muggles, the subject of one too many stories they’ve all passed around in the long nights when sleep evaded them, stories of torture and disgust – their enemy lifts his head and from this angle, she can see only a sliver of his face. She is surprised to find herself curious about what he might look like now – that gnawing fear inside her seems to swell at this. How long ago were they all at school, learning spell work and worrying about NEWTs? How long?
Her stomach knots and Luna seems to sense something in her stance because she looks directly at Hermione and Hermione can’t stand being looked at anymore, not anymore, not at all, not after what happened so she keeps her gaze locked on him. Strands of his strange white hair catch light and curl over as he lifts his neck even more, as if he were trying to look right up at Snape.
From this distance, she can’t tell if Remus says something or Moody does, but it’s a still, shocking moment of quiet, as if all of them were holding their breath. A bird calls out from somewhere in the trees. Neville raises his arm, wand in hand, pointing it at the back of Draco’s head and Luna is still drilling holes into the side of Hermione’s head. Nobody else moves. The air seems to crowd around them, anticipating, waiting and the silence is too much, too big – she fights the urge to shout at all of them.
Why are you here? Why are you here, after all this time? Why is he here?
Nothing happens for a moment, they are all suspended, immobile in that moment, a Death-Eater on his knees before the worst of his enemies, surrounded by people he’s fought off and on a number of times in the last two years. Surrounded by people whose families and friends he has helped wipe out. At their mercy, wandless and in some kind of no-magic bind, bleeding into the ground, humiliated, captured, unforgiven.
And yet still, still – Draco Malfoy, every bit the arrogant terrorizer he’s been in all the stories they’ve heard and shared about him, rears his head back and spits out a glob of blood right at Snape’s boots.
Things move quickly after that – Moody’s got Malfoy by the lapel of his robes, lifting him clean off the ground, and Neville’s shouting at Luna to get everybody back inside and there is a crackling in the air that is distinctly Dark Magic, and she knows it’s not Malfoy because it’s Snape, it’s Snape with a fury she hasn’t seen too often, his sharp features twisting into something ugly and brutal and Remus is pulling on his arm to say something. Seamus has found his way to her and puts a solid arm around her and pulls her into him, as if to guide her back into the house and Hermione hasn’t been touched by another person in a year and it shocks her into another horrible silence, Malfoy forgotten. What the fuck is going on? She keeps her shoulders hard, allowing herself to be moved, quite literally, like a piece on a board (because that’s what she’s always been, isn’t it?). Buzzcut Katie’s following them both in, her bare arms tattooed to the full (another new thing Hermione notices), her wand in her left hand and Hermione shakes off the panic, and she wants to turn around and look, to see what’s going to happen, where is this going but the door shuts abruptly with Luna pulling it in.
“C’mon, ‘ermione, let’s get some tea going? It looks like it might snow again.” Seamus is half speaking to her, half to Katie who nods enthusiastically.
Nobody has spoken to her in a long time. Her throat feels tight, dry. How is he speaking to her as nothing happened? How is Katie managing to smile at her?
Hermione stops them in the hallway, shrugging off his arm, still trying to process everything. Why aren’t the rest of them more surprised? Why aren’t they confused? Why the fuck are they here, putting their arms around her shoulder and offering her tea?
As she regards the three of them quietly, it dawns on her – they knew. They knew all of this was going to happen. They knew he’d been captured, and would be brought to this place one fine morning, and that they would all be having this conversation and perhaps this shows on her face because Luna holds up a hand, a half apology in the gesture itself.
“Look, I know what you’re going to say, Hermione…” She speaks slowly, in that calm voice she reserves for situations where tension has to be diffused. Meetings. Strategy meetings. It may have been a year but Hermione recognise the tone. “We captured him two days ago, actually and well – Harry was the first one to meet us, the extraction team-”
“Wait, Harry was there?” Despite her best effort to sound calm, her voice is shaking. She hasn’t seen Harry in almost a year, ever since It happened.
Katie and Seamus exchange a look, she notes that too. In this exile, she’s taken a lot more to noticing. She has next to nothing else to do.
Luna’s smile is half pity, half something else. She doesn’t have to say anything more but does so anyway, quietly: “Yes, he was there. As soon as he got word that we’d gotten Malfoy, he came. We’d been planning it for months and though we didn’t bring it forward in the agenda in our regular meetings, you know – the notes that you often receive by Owl, this…extraction has been in the works for…well, for a long time.”
Hermione took a step back, her back straightening almost automatically, trying to make herself seem taller, bigger, more strong. “Was Ron also there?”
Ron, who had turned away from her, who had suggested she be relieved of her duties and sent back into ‘her’ world – Ron who had been more cruel than she could have thought possible, Ron who had broken her heart in one fell swoop, after that Mistake and two more, the very few and impossible mistakes that she made – Ron who had voted for this safehouse, for her exile, who had not once looked back after walking out of that hall, Harry’s arm around his shoulder, the boys separating from her as easily as tape might come off plastic wall paint.
Saying his name out loud, saying both their names, after so long, makes cotton of her mouth – she can’t even think about what’s happening outside, or who has been brought here – she can only think of the Vote in Grimmauld Place and how her wand had been snapped in two; the sharp crack that had rung out in the room. Her hand is shaking and she slides it into her pocket, gripping the fabric inside tightly to calm herself.
If Luna notices this, she does not react. Her light eyes seem lighter. She had voted against the safehouse – against the excommunication, against the punishment. She had been one of two votes in Hermione’s favour, a losing side, ever-patient. She brings a hand up to rest it on Hermione’s shoulder – “You already know the answer to that, ‘Mione.”
Hermione inhales sharply but doesn’t react just yet. Seamus and Katie have moved away from them, towards the kitchen but she knows Seamus is still keeping an eye on them, as if expecting something – she can barely fit their figures into her head as the children she once grew up with, they’re so different and sharp now, withdrawn from her. No longer the people she once fought alongside, but wary visitors instead, semi-strangers.
“They both suggested this, they helped come up with the strategy for this. Neville and I executed it by disguising ourselves as Snatchers. We did it exactly as per Snape’s orders and it happened quicker than we thought. We’d planned for this to succeed by – well, perhaps, the beginning of the new year but our intel clued us into where he might be, and Malfoy fell right into our hands. We alerted Snape as soon – um, as soon as Harry and Ron arrived.” Luna squeezes Hermione’s shoulder.
Hermione doesn’t want to want the pity but it feels almost – gentle? Almost a ghost of their earlier friendship, untainted by mistake and miscommunication and well, murder.
Hermione sucks in a breath, trying to keep herself from keeling over right there and then. The magic around her, because of Snape and the others, and that fucking man in the yard, is stifling and incredible – how long has it been since she was around Magic? Months? Days? Weeks? Faintly, she wishes she had a fucking calendar, a watch, anything to tell her how the time was passing.
“Luna,” Her voice is scratchy, but not unsure. That Hermione has disappeared momentarily – this is the cool, collected Hermione, a piece of tightly wrapped paper, the one made only of sharp glass, the one who can take anything, the one who is like a fist, effective and closed and poised for a fight that is always coming. “Why…is Malfoy… here?”
At my safehouse, at this prison sentence, this exile. With me.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in any danger, silly!” Luna almost laughs. “You really are the safest you can be, in this house.” She glances very briefly over her shoulder towards the main door, though there is no noise from there, nothing. Only the crackle of Magic, dark and light, absurd and powerful. She looks back at Hermione and smiles.
An unnervingly kind smile, a smile Hermione hasn’t seen before, a smile she cannot place. “If he manages to survive this, he will be housed here with you.”
Hermione can hear what this means even if this smile is something new, something deep and cutting, something she can’t recognise. She can guess from the exact slant of Luna’s mouth – what is not said but what is clearly meant: you are in no danger because the real, actual danger will be with you, just as it is within you. we will house the mass-murdering manipulative Enemy no.2 with you because we can – we will leave you the man who tormented you for years in school and has destroyed so much of our lives, because you are expendable. First we took your magic, then we took your family. Now, we will take your life.
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